Network with 100 unstable nodes

nodes are randomly and uniformly distributed in a square region of units.
Each node is an unstable second order linear system coupled with other nodes through the following dynamics
(Motee and Jadbabaie ’08)

The coupling between two nodes and is determined by
the Euclidean distance between them. The performance weights
and are set to identity matrices.

We next present the Matlab code and the computational results obtained
using lqrsp.m. In this example, we use the weighted norm to promote
sparsity. We set , and select logarithmically-spaced
points for .

Computational results

Sparsity vs. performance

In the absence of sparsity constraints, i.e., at , the optimal controller

is obtained from the positive definite solution of the algebraic Riccati equation

Performance loss:

Sparsity level:

Performance loss (-axis) vs. Sparsity level (-axis);

As the sparsity level increases, the quadratic performance deteriorates.

Sparsity vs. performance

The above results demonstrate that the optimal sparse feedback gain,
with of non-zero elements relative to the centralized feedback gain ,
introduces performance loss of compared to .

Communication graphs of distributed controllers

As increases, the communication architecture of distributed controllers becomes sparser.
Note that the communication graph does not have to be connected since the subsystems are

dynamically coupled to each other;

allowed to measure their own states.

Communication graph of the distributed controller for

Communication graph of the distributed controller for

Communication graph of the distributed controller for

Danger of truncation

Our sparsity-promoting algorithm identifies communication architectures that are difficult to
guess a priori. To highlight this point, and to illustrate danger of truncation, let us consider
the truncated centralized gain ,

The figure shows the communication graph of the truncated controller obtained by setting .
Even though the communication graph appears to be very dense ( has nonzero elements —
relative to ), the truncated gain does not even provide the closed-loop stability.